Literature and travel have intertwined histories. The great epics of antiquity were chronicles of war (The Iliad) and of travel (The Odyssey). Don Quijote is about the adventures of a madman and his squire and their adventures away from home. Some of the standard...

“Or be a child again and play on a more or less apocalyptic soccer team.” – Roberto Bolaño In April of this year Laura and I traveled to Oregon to visit Laura’s brother Jim and his fiancé (now wife) Katie. Laura flew into Portland from Tucson, I flew in from San...

I didn’t expect to like Tucson very much. The only things I had heard about it was that it was in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, warnings about its crime rates, that it gets lots of sun and little rain, and that there are lots of retirees there. I was, however,...